Provider of Miracles
by EvanescingSky
Summary: Orsino asks a favor of Hawke. The Champion's failures begin to wear on her.


The night sky over Kirkwall was roiling with storm clouds. Where some countries had spring or fall, Kirkwall had the rainy season, and it was never gentle. Rain pounded down on the city, turning its dust and soot to muck that ran down the walls of buildings and washed through the streets. The waters between the Gallows and the city proper frothed and the elves stayed off Sundermount for fear of lightning strikes. It was still early in the season, but rain was in the air. Orsino wished he had not told the Champion to come tonight, but it was done. He could see her—presumably her—a lone dark figure hanging about near the docking bay for the Gallows, pacing idly about in a tiny, wavering circle of light from a lantern. He quickened his step until he was close enough to see her, the warpaint on her nose smudged with sea spray.

"Any particular reason for the charming locale, First Enchanter?" she asked. He could hear the vague annoyance in her voice, but she had come. He gripped the edges of his hood, then choose to leave it up.

"Something different, Champion," he said. She barked out a laugh lacking in amusement, but he plowed on before she could speak. "I need to ask a favor of you."

"Of course," she said, blinking in surprise.

"There are mages," he said in a low voice, despite the late hour and the abandoned square. Wind blew the waves up against the docks and he stepped closer to the Champion so she might hear better. "A group of new mages, just past their Harrowings," he said. "They've disappeared."

"Oh, no." The Champion tried to school her face, but he could see the dismay there.

"If I tell Meredith…I fear what she will do to them," he said. "She'll bring them back, but I doubt she will let this pass without the Rite of Tranquility or Maker forbid, execution."

"You think she would go that far?" Hawke asked, just before her brow furrowed. Of course she would go that far—was that not what Orsino had been fighting against for years?

"Some of them…expressed sympathy for the idea of the mage underground," he said reluctantly. "The Knight-Commander will no doubt use this as evidence that they intended to stage an assault on the Templars, or destroy Kirkwall's Circle, or some other outlandish claim. All they wanted was freedom. We are being _throttled_ by the Templars, the Knight-Commander will drive every one of these mages to death or flight if she does not see sense!" Orsino's voice rose to a furious pitch and the Champion looked uneasily towards the foreboding structure of the Circle that loomed over the Gallows. "Please, Hawke," he said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial murmur again. "I know I am asking a lot of you, but if anyone in Kirkwall can do it…"

"I'll do everything I can," she promised, taking his hands. "I don't want to see mages punished for moments of impulse."

"Find them and bring them back," Orsino pleaded. "We can still slip them back into the Circle with the Templars none the wiser. These are young adults, they aren't thinking about the consequences. They can be reasoned with."

"I will," she promised.

"If you can't get them back…" Orsino pulled his hands free of hers, paced to the edge of the dock, and looked out at the mist bearing down over Kirkwall. "Don't let them stay here," he said, a coarse rasp in his voice. "If they will not return to the Circle, they cannot stay in Kirkwall. They will be killed."

"You want me to help them escape," the Champion said slowly.

"Only as a last resort," Orsino insisted, turning back to her. "Please, you must see. If you cannot persuade them to return, the Templars will bring back their heads. Do you know how many letters home to families I've had to write the last five years? I know it goes against the Order, and the Chantry…if there was another way, I would take it!" He jerked into agitated pacing. "She has left me with no option! Even when we followed the rules she lashed out at every opportunity, wielded the worst punishments against us as a matter of course and took pleasure in how we cowered before her! Now we are left with no alternative but to fight back, and she will punish us for this as well!" His hands clenched tightly at his sides and fury swelled his throat shut. Meredith would punish them all for an accident of birth; the longer time went on, the more he thought that in her mind, the only good mage was a dead mage.

"I will do whatever I can," the Champion swore, putting a hand over her heart. "I know how the Templars have been squeezing Kirkwall's circle. I will bring them back safely, I promise."

"You come to us from the Maker, Champion," Orsino murmured, rubbing his forehead. If he did not have the Champion to turn to, he didn't know what he would do. He would have no choice but to admit to Meredith that the mages had fled and beg her for mercy. Begging seemed to be about all he could do these days. Begging and empty threats.

The Champion let out a laugh that bordered on bitter.

"I don't know about that. I would hope the Maker has a better plan than me." Had it begun to rain, or was that just spray from the water? Orsino couldn't tell. The Champion regarded him through the murky light, then stepped in closer and pulled him into an embrace, her arms loose around his waist. "I'll take care of it," she said quietly against his ear. "You have enough to worry about." Orsino resisted the urge to simply collapse into the Champion's arms. He sank into the embrace, resting his chin on her shoulder.

"You've already done more than most," he said. "I hate to ask more, especially when it will turn the Knight-Commander's ire on you."

"I have that already, First Enchanter," she said with amusement. "Meredith has hated me from the moment I suggested you might have a point. She hates anyone who doesn't agree with her completely." Hawke said it like she was realizing it for the first time. "Besides, what kind of Champion would I be if I couldn't come to the aid of my secret lover, hm?"

He was deeply glad for the cover of night that hid the fierce blush on his face.

"This is serious," he objected, pulling back when it felt less like she could have fried an egg on his cheek.

"I know," she responded, and the look in her eyes confirmed it. "You can count on me."

"I know." They stood in silence as the rain became more pronounced, Hawke's hands resting on his lower back, reminding him of all he was taking that should not be his. "Are you staying tonight?" he asked. She sighed and withdrew, looking back across the water at the city.

"I can't," she said. "I have business tonight."

"In this weather?"

"In _all_ weather, First Enchanter," she said with a toothy smile. "Rain nor sleet nor blistering heat shall stop me!"

"It will be dangerous getting back to Kirkwall," he warned.

"Yes, it will," she said cheerfully.

"Can you swim?"

"A bit."

"Didn't you promise to be less reckless?" he asked in exasperation.

"No, I told you I wasn't reckless to being with," she reminded him. Orsino frowned deeply, but the Champion just smiled and cupped his face in one hand. "Don't worry so much, you silly old man," she teased, tweaking the tip of his ear. She leaned in and gave him a kiss. "Trust your Champion. I'll be alright! I'm always alright. I'm always alright."

"Someday we're going to put that in your obituary," he said gravely.

"Andraste's ass! I'm not dead yet! And I should go, before this rain picks up any more." They exchanged another hurried kiss, and Hawke pulled herself from him to step back into the dinghy she had taken over from the city. The words clambered for Orsino's lips, blocking his throat up: the urge to plead with her to stay, not to sail out into the storm, not to throw herself to whatever wolves she meant to fight that night. He had seen the shadows in the Champion's eyes, the ghosts with their hands around her throat—he knew there was darkness in her she would not show, and regularly he wondered if she meant to die in battle. Orsino was not a praying man, but he sent one up for the Champion of Kirkwall, to give her strength against her demons.

"Maker be with her," he muttered as she began rowing her little white boat out into the black sea. "Maker be with us all."

Within the week, two of the missing mages turned up back at the Circle, shaken, but alive. Orsino reprimanded them thoroughly, then turned them over to their respective enchanters for further chastising. He understood why they fled, but that did not change how their actions would reflect on and endanger the rest of the Circle, and _that_ he could not tolerate.

Another week went by with no sign of the remaining three. He did not hear from the Champion. Orsino argued with Meredith and filled out paperwork and tried not to let the pit of anxiety in his gut become a mire.

"Another escapee," Meredith declared when he entered her office at the behest of her captain. She threw down a file on her desk; it slid across the surface towards him. "Edith Branchard. She was a member of the Resolutionists wasn't she?" Orsino ground his teeth; clearly, the Knight-Commander already knew the answer. "Strange she was not reported missing."

"Then you have found her?"

"She is dead," Meredith said. Orsino worked so hard to control his expressions, that the Knight-Commander might not know when she had gotten to him, but it never worked as well as he wanted. He knew she could see the shock and dismay on his face. "She attacked a patrol of my Templars and they were not able to subdue her otherwise. If we had known she was missing ahead of time, we might have been able to prepare for this." Meredith's pierced him like spears of ice, but the fire blazing up inside him melted them away. As if he would tell Meredith anything of the goings-on of the Circle, when she could not be trusted to let him breathe without accusing him of conspiring!

"Somehow I doubt the outcome would have been different," he said, barely containing the snarl in his voice.

"Do you think I look for reasons to kill mages?" she demanded, turning fully to face him.

"How could I think otherwise?" Orsino's hands curled into fists. "How can you expect them not to run, when you tighten your leash until it chokes them? You back them into a corner and blame them for lashing out!"

"That was your defense of the abomination captured in Darktown last month as well," she said. "Will you dismiss all threats to this city as the childish antics of bored mages?" Orsino's eyes flicked down towards Meredith's desk and tried to summon a suitable retort.

"It was not a _defense_, it was an explanation," he claimed. "And this was not a case of blood magic, it was a runaway mage! She surely would have returned in her own time."

"She wielded magic against the Templar Order, what would you have me do?" The Knight-Commander glared at him.

"I would have you bring them in without violence! I would have you cease to drive them away! I would have you stop using the rite of Tranquility for offenses that do not merit it!"

"That's enough, First Enchanter," she said sharply. "My Templars do their best to work with these mages but you force our hand. Take Ms. Branchard's file. Her phylactery will be removed from the library for you to pick up this afternoon."

"Please, don't trouble yourself." Orsino snatched the file off the table and turned to go. "I wouldn't want to strain your Templars."

Three days later, when he had finished composing the letter home to Edith's family to inform them of her fate, the Champion dragged herself into his office. She had come to him with grim news before, but it had been some time—and they had been less personal the last time. Now, she would not even meet his eyes, just lingered in the doorway, looking at her feet, until Orsino offered her a seat. It was only once she had dropped down into the chair and pressed her hands together in front of her face for a few moments that she lifted her eyes to look at him.

"Did those two make it back? The ones I sent from Lowtown?" she asked.

"Patrick and Orlaith are back," he said. "Edith was killed by the Templars." The Champion rubbed her face and dug her fingers into her eyes.

"We tried to reason with her," she said, her voice unusually high. "But she wouldn't listen. She kept saying she'd…she'd rather die than go back. She ran off, and we tried to catch her. I think she ran right into the Templars. We got there too late." She covered her face. "And the other two…one of them, he was already gone. We think he was attacked by someone in Darktown. He might not have ever seen them coming, the damn cutthroats. And the other, they…they were certain we worked for Meredith, and they fought us. We tried to bring them down quietly, to subdue them, but…" Hawke lifted her head and her eyes were bloodshot. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, I tried. I—" Her voice cracked and she hung her head. "I failed."

"You brought two of them back," Orsino murmured, mentally running through who would need to be contacted on behalf of Gretel and Marillion.

"Two! Of five!" The Champion jumped to her feet and began to pace around the room. "I don't understand. Are things so awful in the Circle that death is preferable?" She looked to Orsino, who turned his shamed, impotently furious gaze down on the desk.

"To some, yes," he ground out. "But it has been that way for a long time."

"How long?"

"Since before I became First Enchanter," he said.

"Maker's breath." Hawke rubbed vigorously at her face. "This can't be right. This can't be what the Chantry meant with the Circle. Anders is always going on about how awful it is and I…I suppose I always thought his case was the odd one out. But Kirkwall seems just as bad, and the stories you hear from the mages get worse and worse…" She stood in front of his bookshelf, fingering the spines of the tomes there. "I never wanted to take sides here," she said in a low voice. "I never believed the Templars should be dissolved, or anything like that, but…this can't be right. Things can't go on like this. What are we meant to do, hope M—hope the Templars who hate mages all drop dead within the next year?" She turned to give him a frustrated look.

"Now you see my problem," he said grimly. "The more I argue for our rights, the more Meredith cracks down. The more she tightens her grip, the more the mages fight against her."

"Is there not some way we can remove her?"

"That is a very dangerous thing to say, Champion." Orsino's gaze immediately flitted to the door. "I would advise caution." The Champion said nothing for minutes, her lips pursed in thought. Then:

"My father was an apostate." She was looking at the books again, dragging her fingers down the spines and shifting her weight from foot to foot.

"I…had heard rumors," Orsino said carefully. "Then there is magic in your family?" How close had they come, to the Champion of Kirkwall being a mage herself? What would that have changed? He tried to imagine Hawke in the Circle and dismissed the idea immediately—she would have been made Tranquil a long time ago.

"My little sister," she said, her voice low and soft, an ache welling up from some deep place that Orsino could not fathom. "Bethany."

"She is not with the Kirkwall Circle." He would have known the sister of the Champion.

"She was never with any Circle," Hawke said. She touched one of the blades at her hip. "I learned to use these for her sake. We knew the names of all the Templars in Lothering, the routes they patrolled, the temperaments of each of them…it was never anything like here. We didn't let our guard down, but they weren't like bounty hunters, constantly looking for heads to bring in." Orsino didn't dare speak, or otherwise chance breaking the Champion's recollections. "When we came here, she was terrified, I know she was. But she knew we couldn't stay in Ferelden. I swore I wouldn't let them take her in. How many times did I hold my breath walking by the Templars, waiting for one of them to shout after us? How many nights did I lie awake waiting for pounding at the door, for someone to come drag her away? And in the end, it was me." Bitterness dripped off Hawke's tone like Orsino had never heard before. She leaned an arm against the edge of a shelf, her hand curled into a fist. "I took her into the goddamned Deep Roads. And now I'm the only Hawke left." Her forehead met her arm, and her body was rigid as stone.

What could he say? Vividly, he remembered Leandra Hawke—remembered the story of her death, the magic that had been used against her. _I'm the only Hawke left._

"I had a sister," he remarked quietly. "In Ansburg."

"You did?" She looked over. "What happened to her?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen her since I was nine, and they took me to the Circle." Hawke looked him over—the gray hair, the lined face, the weary eyes—and perhaps wondered what her memories of her sister would be when she had seen as many years as he had.

"That's so young," she said softly.

"Not as young as others," he said. "I think she knew before then, but nothing ever happened that was enough to make her confess. We thought we could keep it secret. No one pays attention to the alienage unless there's a riot. But it was getting worse, and I did not want her to have to make that choice, or be punished for keeping silent. I surrendered to the Templars myself." Hawke just stared.

"Wow," she said faintly. "That was…brave."

"It was inevitable," he said. "I thought I could at least spare her her last memory of me being dragged off in chains by the Templars."

"What about your parents? What did they say?"

"They were dead," he said.

"Life's just a joy, isn't it?" The Champion pushed off the bookshelf and her jaw was so tight Orsino thought she might try to put her fist through a wall. "What a fucking gift. And we can thank the Maker for all this, huh? Praise be!" She slammed her hand down against his desk and threw herself into the chair in front of it.

Without another word, Orsino got up to pour them both a drink. Maker knew they needed it.

"I'm sorry about your sister," he said as he handed her a goblet.

"I'm sorry about yours," she said.

"I'm sure she would not blame you for what happened."

"She didn't need to, Mother did it for her." Hawke threw back half the goblet in one swallow. In other circumstances, Orsino might have protested such treatment of a good vintage, but it seemed so pitifully unimportant then. He touched her hair lightly, giving her the chance to move away. When she didn't, he stroked her head in a way he hoped was soothing. "Have a drink, won't you?" she grumbled. "Don't make me feel like a drunk." She knocked down the rest of the goblet and got to her feet to help herself to more. Orsino took a long draught of his own, but before he had the chance to finish it, Hawke had removed the cup from his hand. She set it down on the desk, took his face between her hands, and kissed him ferociously. The fire of it burned through him, stoking the desperation he had felt for weeks since the disappearance of the mages, and he wanted her to pin him to the wall. Instead, he gathered his wits and gently pushed her back.

"Don't do this," he said.

"Do what, First Enchanter?"

"Use us an escape."

"Wasn't that always what this was?" Orsino drew away from her, his chest tight. "I didn't mean it like that," she backtracked at once. "But isn't that a part of it? Wasn't it always? I know you need to get away from this as much as I do!"

"If you need a distraction, go visit the Blooming Rose." Why was he suddenly pushing back now? She wasn't wrong! From the get-go he had assumed it was nothing more than a game, a bit of fun and excitement for both of them; the thrill of a forbidden tryst. So why did he balk now, against her categorizing it so? "I have work to do."

"I don't want anyone at the Blooming Rose," the Champion argued, putting a hand down on his desk to keep him from going back to his papers. "I want _you_."

"Well I'm busy," he snapped at her, jerking his papers out from under her hand. "And I won't play your games, Champion!"

"Oh, that's rich!" She looked at him with flashing amber eyes, and he recalled the defeat of the Arishok: How he and Meredith had stormed the Viscount's Keep, only to find Hawke standing over the massive corpse, drenched in blood, with that wild look on her face and the bizarre smile on her mouth. "You were perfectly happy to play before, Orsino!"

"That was before-!"

"Before _what_?" she demanded. "Before you knew what a failure I really am? Can't keep your people safe, can't keep my family safe, can't argue the damn Knight-Commander down!"

"No, you foolish-!" Before he finished the sentence, he had dropped the papers again, and was kissing the Champion with a kind of hunger he barely knew he was capable of. She met him with the same fervor, grabbing at his hips, wrapping her arms around him. In a clamor of teeth and tongues and lips they cried out their frustration and bitterness and disappointment. Hawke crouched to seize him around the legs, lifting him up onto the desk. She pounced on him like a wildcat, and he let her. He let her do whatever she wanted and responded with shameful enthusiasm to everything, frantically accepting her, all of her, wet and hot and eager, and insatiable in her distress.

After it was all done, and the Champion sat half-clothed in his own chair, Orsino wondered very briefly why he didn't just leave the whole damn place behind. Forget the Circle, forget Kirkwall, forget Meredith—he had something here that he wanted, and he was going to lose it if he didn't close his grasp.

She was unusually quiet.

"I'm sorry," she said, her hands folded in front of her face in the same thoughtful way as before, but with a different flavor of shame. "I shouldn't have done that."

"I shouldn't have let you."

"It wasn't fair of me." Orsino was picking up pieces of his robes from the floor, the desk, the chairs. "Are you angry with me?" She looked up at him with that puppy dog stare that could not have been more different from her eyes just before. It gave him whiplash, how she could swing from the fearsome and terrible slayer of Qunari to a young woman seeking approval or acceptance just like that.

"No," he sighed, wiping his mouth and chin dry with as much dignity as he could muster. "I don't see how I can be. I didn't stop you."

"You tried," she said glumly.

"Not very hard," he countered. Hawke rubbed her eyes and cradled her head in her hands.

"Still, I'm sorry. I don't want to ruin…this." It was on the tip of Orsino's tongue to ask what 'this' was, but he found he was afraid of the answer.

"You haven't. We're…in difficult positions," he said. "Perhaps this was…necessary." She looked up at him with pitiful eyes and he sighed. "If I wanted you to leave, Hawke, I would make you leave." This she seemed to accept, and she lowered her gaze again before rising to pull up her shorts and breeches and arrange her clothes presentably again.

Perhaps he ought to be ashamed as she was. Perhaps he would be, when more time had gone by. For now, all he could think about, in sickening alteration, was Hawke fucking him desperately against the desk, the sound of the papers shifting and falling around them, and the knowledge that three young mages were never coming back. How many of them had chosen to die, rather than return? Despite all his efforts, how many Kirkwall mages considered death preferable to life in the Circle? And what sign was it that Hawke was letting him see her in such straits?

"Isabela would say a good fucking is always necessary," the Champion said, running her hands through her hair in an attempt to fix it where Orsino had yanked his hands through it. "But she almost started a war so maybe…" Whatever clever quip she had been going to make trailed off, like she just didn't have it in her to finish. She watched him instead, then went over and tentatively placed a hand over his on the back of the chair. Rather than words, she rubbed her fingers lightly over the back of his hand and sought something in his eyes with great need. "I'll do better next time," she said.

"I'm not angry with you," he said.

"Why wouldn't you be? You asked me to do something and I said I would and I didn't."

"I asked you for a miracle," Orsino said.

"And I'm the Champion of Kirkwall," she replied, withdrawing her hand. "I can fly and shoot a man through the eye at two hundred paces and talk the Grand Cleric into supporting the mage underground."

"You're just a person," Orsino said, looking up at her. "Kirkwall might have forgotten that, but you cannot."

"Right," she said, with a feeble smile. "Just like everybody else." She glanced around the room, saw that she had gathered all her things, and made for the door. Pausing at the door, she spoke in a husky, tight voice. "I am sorry though." She did not turn to look at him as she spoke and did not linger long enough for him to say anything in return.


End file.
